Self-Sabotage is a Lie: The Hidden Duality Keeping You Stuck | Dr. John Demartini

Wellness + Wisdom Podcast

Josh Trent

Education, Self-improvement

4.8 • 913 Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2026

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is self-sabotage the result of rejecting one side of your own duality?

Josh Trent welcomes Dr. John Demartini to the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast, episode 803, to dismantle the myth of self sabotage, reveal how duality governs perception and destiny, unpack why pride and shame distort authenticity, explore the hidden order behind chaos and so called evil, and show how integrating opposites through the right questions unlocks gratitude, fulfillment, and true self mastery.

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In This Episode, Dr. John Demartini Uncovers:

[01:15] Self-Sabotage Is a Myth

How we create self-sabotaging behavior.
Why we don't follow through on our highest priorities.
How self-sabotage is feedback that tells us that we're pursuing something that's not a high priority for us.
The importance of delegating tasks that are not the highest priority.

Resources:

[05:00] Mastery Happens Through The Opposites

Why there is a hidden order in the perceived chaos.
How we can restore the hidden order.
Why seeing both positives and negatives means that we can see the the whole reality.
What it truly means to love someone.

[09:25] Perception Changes Absolutely Everything

How perception defines our reality.
Why asking different questions can create a new reality.
How we resist change and own our traits.
Why we resent people who remind us of something hidden within us.
How we can become fully aware.

[14:40] Values Hierarchy

The role of our intuitive feedback system in our brain.
Why we follow moral hypocrisies we learned throughout our lives.
How perfection is the benefit of both sides of polarity.
Why being proud of ourselves gives us permission to be ashamed.
How pride and shame are not the authentic self.
Why everything is teaching us how to love ourselves and others.

[19:50] Pride VS Gratitude

Why gratitude is more important than pride.
What actualization is.
How thinking we're successful means we're on the way down.
Why pride eventually makes us feel humbled.
Positive thinking is not the solution.
How Dr. Demartini's wife's criticism helped him return to authenticity.
Why he created a list of humbling questions for when he felt proud.

[27:15] You Can't Get Rid of The Ego

How we can integrate the ego instead of despising it.
Why the ego is a part of human essence.
The importance of having fulfilment in life.
How we create a void within ourselves, which makes us attract more void.
Why fullness is already present.

Resources:

Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday

[31:45] What Stops Your Growth

How the mystery of the unknown exceeds the known.
Why the known keeps us on a journey of discovery.
How approaching our knowledge with pride brings us down.
Why we can't experience the hidden order of the universe all the time.

[34:35] What Is God?

The difference between an atheist and believer.
How our fear creates fantasies of what God is.
Why we can't handle the mystery of God.
How divinity is light.

Resources:

Oh My God (2009)

[40:10] The Purpose of Evil

Why evil exists in the universe.
How everything exists in opposites to maintain order.
Why evil things have their purpose.
How Dr. Demartini looks at the objective of all events.
Why nothing can be labeled good or bad.

[46:25] The Illusion of Morality

How God is in every single action.
Why we need to be taught the illusions before we're ready for the truth.
How our moralities evolve.
Why we're not living our lives based on universal laws.

[51:55] Teach Your Children Accountability

How Dr. Demartini learned accountability from his father.
Why he learned to buy his freedom at a very young age.
How his dad raised him to be aware.
Why the greatest teacher is exemplification.

[58:10] Good and Bad Don't Exist

Why our wounds come from incomplete awareness.
How we become a master of destiny.
Why the trap of morality keeps us enslaved.
How believing in good and bad makes us disempowered.

[01:00:50] Your Values Define You

Why identity is defined by what we value most.
How there are no right or wrong values.
Why our values evolve and change.
How our identity is always oriented to the highest fulfilment.
Why our power lies in knowing who we are.

[01:07:45] Synthesis + Synchronicity

How we can stay authentic in the times of AI and social media.
What it takes to find a synthesis of two opinions.
How for every opinion, there is an opposite opinion.
Why we need to seek synchronicity of the opposites.
The importance of appreciating both sides.

[01:10:35] You're Part of The Matrix

How we're both the hero and the villain at the same time.
Why we can't get rid of any part of ourselves.
How comparing ourselves to others make us feel like we need to lose or gain something.
Why aging is a byproduct of missing information.

[01:14:40] Ask The Right Questions

Whenever we experience an emotion, we're in a state of incomplete awareness.
How we need to ask ourselves which side we're overlooking.
Why we can't rush into new relationships.
How our emotions tell us what questions to ask.

[01:17:25] Love + Gratitude Are The Key

Why everything is an illusion, except love.
How the right questions calibrate the mind.
What blocks us from enlightenment.
The two types of gratitude.
Why Dr. Demartini journals on gratitude every day.

"The more we're attracted to innocence, the more we attract the perpetrator. The more we attract looking for protection, the more we attract the aggression, the more we're looking for peace, the more we attract the conflict. The pairs of opposites are inseparable. We tend to think that something's terrible or something's terrific, and that's the illusion. They're not. They're pairs of opposites. And so the average person who hasn't seen that order still gets caught in the labels of this is good and this is bad, because they haven't broadened their mind enough to see both sides simultaneously." — Dr. John Demartini

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Self-sabotage is a myth.
0:02.0	It's not really sabotage, it's feedback to let you know you're pursuing something that's not really the very highest priority.
0:08.0	Because if you strive for that which is unobtainable and try to avoid that which is unavoidable,
0:13.0	you're going to feel disempowered because you can't do it.
0:16.0	The polarities are feedback mechanisms guiding us back to authenticity.
0:20.0	True self-worth is the synthesis and
0:22.1	synchronicity of the elevated and depressed self-esteems, the pride and the shames, the success
0:26.7	and the failures. Your hierarchy values dictate your perception, decisions, and actions,
0:30.8	and your identity revolves around what you value most. You only react to people on the outside
0:36.6	that represent a part of you on the inside that you haven't owned.
0:39.6	And you only resent them because they're reminding you of something you feel ashamed about,
0:43.1	that you're hiding from yourself, and they're coming to your life to help you see it.
0:46.3	They're your teacher, not your enemy.
0:48.1	They're actually the guide for you to uncover the part of you that you haven't loved yet.
0:52.4	But we don't see it because we're trapped
0:54.2	in the moral hypocrisies and the polarities of the amygdala. At the level of the essence of the soul, nothing's missing. So I'm a whole being and I don't need to get rid of any part of myself or I don't need to find some part that I think is missing. It's not. It's there. Ryan Holiday has a book. Ego is the enemy. I disagree.
1:12.4	But what are your thoughts on the integration of the ego rather than the demonization of the ego?
1:20.0	If self-sabotage is a myth and we don't really sabotage ourselves, what is self-sabotage in your own vernacular?
1:28.3	Each individual lives by a set of priorities, a set of values, things that are most or least
1:35.7	important into it. Whenever they set goals and objectives that are aligned and congruent
1:41.1	with what they value most, which is their most intrinsic value.
1:46.4	They spontaneously act.
	...

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